The HABIT
by Cattivo
Summary: "The cops chalked it up to her husband being on PCP, they always do, but I know better, and so did Monica." For Roger Paladino, it's a deadly mistake that he can't take back. A brief novelization of Paladino's encounter with The HABIT.


**The HABIT**

an EveryManHYBRID novelization by Zri Kolsen

Disclaimer: The following is a mere novelization of events touched upon in the reports of Roger Paladino. The characters and events of this novelization thus belong to their respectful owners; again this is a mere novelized adaptation of the events. But I'm sure you all knew that~

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Roger Paladino's left leg is being gnawed into meat that barely hangs off his calf bone by a bear trap.

The way he figures it, this whole thing was a set up. It's the only explanation he has for why one of these fucking things is in the middle of a warehouse, of all places. In the dim light of one of the many lamps in storage, he can see swastikas and newspaper clippings hanging on metal sheet walls. Clippings about horrific things from 911 to local kidnappings, from rape cases to suicide bombings, an entire wall of the place gravitates around the blackest bits of human tragedy. He can feel the bile gorging in the back of his throat at the damp, rotten musk of decay in the air.

He wonders how much abuse this shell's taken; probably more than it's worth.

Shwarts is a huge son of a bitch by himself as it is, bulky with muscle and sculpted in even chapters, thick in the neck with fingers wrought around his weapon like iron bands. InHABITed, there's no telling how much stronger he's gotten. Something about the way his muscles tense seems unnatural. Something about it reminds Paladino of overstuffed sausages, and for a second he almost laughs at the thought.

But he's sure that's just the blood loss.

That, and maybe the sight of the fire axe in Shwarts' hands. The axe is splotched in places as if it's seen use before, and there's no doubt in Paladino's mind that it has. Half the place is construed of human remains, remains that stink with the rot of bad meat and reek of everything the Habit loves. Fear, struggle, desperation, futility, death.

The Habit forces Shwarts' mouth into a hungry, gleaming grin. He resembles a Jack-O-Lantern, missing a couple teeth, one of the clear signs of mutilation that the Habit loves leaving behind before moving on. It's a grin that's all too heavily warped, addled with a quickly paced stream of twisted ideas, ideas that involve slamming the axe into the officer's stomach and limbs. It doesn't want him dead that quickly. It never wants them dead that quickly.

"Was it worth it, Roger?" the Habit asks, somehow rendering Shwarts' voice into a gravelly lilt.

Paladino watches the dark behind Shwarts erupt with a glow of headlights, and smiles faintly. "Yup."

The Habit tilts Shwarts' head toward the sirens that start screeching outside, looks back at Paladino, and smiles knowingly. A stereo in storage suddenly crackles to life of its own seeming volition, and Rob Zombie's Superbeast begins to blast from speakers caked with grime and neglect.

"No fuckin' need for you to go anywhere, old buddy old pal old friend," The Habit grins as the guitars kick up. The speakers thump with hard hitting drums, and Paladino feels the bass quake in the concrete. His leg throbs with agitation, his heart leaps. "Why don't you just relax while I take care of this?"

The glass windows shatter as gas canisters are thrown in. The doors are thrown open with a deafening clamor. It doesn't take long at all for the voices of the swat team Charleston called in to rise over the guitar and Rob Zombie. Their demands are clear, screamed; they're under the impression that they're going after a terrorist constructing a bomb inside the warehouse. It will be one of the biggest regrets Paladino will ever face when all this is over, but right now he's watching.

Through eyes that are blurry with agony and from his sprawled place on the concrete floor of the warehouse, Paladino can only watch.

The Habit steps toward them, into the wash of lights and the uneven choir of sirens, and its fingers drum along the hilt of the axe. Paladino's heart seems to pound in time to a steady drip of blood that falls from the swath of the blade for a moment, and strangely enough it entrances him, locks him in place. He's not going anywhere anyway. He can feel the Habit's grin even as it turns Shwarts away from him.

There's a long, heavy silence taut with an eerie stillness. Paladino swallows a lump that's swollen in his throat as blood keeps right on pooling beneath him, leaving him woozy, his arms fall like lead weights as he strives again for the nine millimeter a few yards away from him. There's an entire SWAT team standing with their guns held high; assault rifles, M16s, capable of planting plenty of 5.56x45s at close range in five seconds. That wasn't even taking into account the massive damage the bullets tended to leave thanks to the nasty tumble trail an M16 tended to give them. They're uniformly clad in dark clothes and protective pads and vests, their weapons are clicking dangerously and in the distance is the tha-thunking of chopper rotors.

The Habit's grin unfurls.

So does something dark, something impeccably black and thick in the air that causes the lights to flicker. Paladino's breath comes barking out of him as he gives a terrific shiver, his skin pops with goosebumps, his blood runs completely cold and he feels something brush past him. He doesn't know what. It leaves him sweating and shaking, whatever it is.

It's made of screams, nightmares, gas chambers, knives, pipes and crying and human innards spraying on brick walls while insane peals of laughter and the frantic howls of dying rabbits envelope him and echo low and quick in his ears.

The swat team's guns lower, and the men look at each other in confusion. Some of them are beginning to chuckle. The laughter is weighted and nervous.

And that's when the firing starts. Bullets whirl and thunk into other men, they scream and shout, they cry and try to reach one another, the ones that weren't touched and prodded as the Habit stepped toward them. Pulling himself on a fresh surge of unadulterated fear, Paladino yanks the jaws of the bear trap open. The bullets don't frighten him. This is his life, he's been shot at before, he knows instinctively to stay low and just go for the outside where it's safe and men aren't senselessly murdering one another for no fucking reason.

The boom of Rob Zombie carries him across the facility, like his own sick little wave to surf in order to stay conscious. Truth be known, he's surprised he even has that much blood in him. He remembers a random trivia fact, that you can only lose so much before you can't physically stay conscious, but he gives an elaborate middle finger to junior high science and keeps moving.

But he hears the crack of a fire axe hacking through helmets, and he knows with a sickening plunge of stomach-to-ankles that it's completely his fault. The men keep screaming behind him.

_Those poor fucks_, he thinks as he grunts while using his elbows to pull himself along. A sludgy trail of blood drapes behind him. _Never had a chance, none of 'em did._

He's greeted by a refreshing lungful of balmy evening air outside as he crawls through one of the open doors. He's met with the barrels of a couple rifles, but then the men recognize who he is, and hoist him up by his arms.

"Ed," he wheezes, shaking from the vertigo of his shifting gravity. "I gotta get to Ed…!"

They don't ask questions. Ed Charleston is watching his team murder one another from beside a squad van, and his jaw drops as he watches an axe crash through the neck of one of the best shooters. The man's neck opens in a vicious spray; the blood erupts like a geyser and douses the Habit's grin in a cowl of dark, pulsing red.

The Habit and the rest of the team disappear inside the warehouse.

"What the fuck is that?!" Ed Charleston greets Paladino as he's set gently by the van, his left leg kept as straight as can be while Charleston points in the direction of the sounds of carnage. "Hey! What the fuck is that?! What's that piece of shit doing?!"

Paladino literally can't answer for a minute. His leg is throbbing a hot pulse of its own, a rhythm that's too fast and leaves him gasping as he swallows down the urge to vomit from the pain alone. He can feel the pallor swallow the color left in his face. He can feel his skin growing cold and beaded in sweat, like waking up from a nightmare. The difference is that he hasn't woken up yet.

"I asked you a goddamn question, Roger!" Charleston growls. "You say we're going after a terrorist, well, what the fuck's he packing in there?! It's not every day you see a swat team shootin' each other, like they got no goddamn clue what they're doing!"

Paladino is about to answer when the front doors fly open.

Three officers are escorting the Habit, empty handed with its arms behind its back toward the running van still waiting outside. Shwarts' grizzled face is hypnotically inhuman, twisted in a feral grin with blood in his teeth.

"You gotta get outta here," Paladino shakes his head. He knows that it's over, but not for the side he wants. "You and them boys, you just pack it up and get the hell outta here."

Charleston's just finished saying something into a walkie talkie, and it crackles with an affirmative. Above them, the chopper's rotors are steadily growing louder. "What are you talking about? We got him." Ed says, though he sounds as bitter as the situation allows. He's pissed at him, he may even hate him, and it's not like he doesn't deserve it.

Which is why they need to get out of here, and let him finish this alone.

"You guys have done enough. It was stupid, fuckin' stupid to think that guns could stop it."

"Stop what? Are you sayin' the bomb's still in there?"

"Goddamnit, there IS no fucking bomb!"

"What the hell – "

There's another hurricane of bullets that sweeps through the squadron with startling violence. Waves upon waves of cartridges fly through bones and muscle, tearing through armor and skin. Skulls are split and ears are shot off, fingers are blown and throats are reduced to tattered pulps across the glass littered floor of the warehouse and the concrete.

Some of the men collapse. Others are laughing, laughing while they shoot the ones that fall over. Others still are screaming, crying, their eyes wet with tears behind their visors as their rifles off their teammates completely against their will. The ones that can fight are suddenly plunging their clawing fingers into their eye sockets, and with quiet squelching noises that are muffled by the roar of the music, they rip out their own eyes and then go for their own throats.

Relaxing against the van, the Habit grins and watches them with sick fascination. Shwarts' head tilts toward Paladino as the bullets, screams and crying roar on around them. Paladino can read that grin perfectly, and he knows he's next.

_You fuckin' did this, junior._ The Habit's voice echoes inside his brain. He can't decide if it's actually him or just a hallucination. **_You fuckin' did this all by yourself. I'm proud of you._**

Paladino doesn't bother fighting it anymore. He throws his head to the side and vomits helplessly.

High above them, the chopper is going down. The pilot is sending it wheeling towards the earth in a suicidal dive, unaware that it's not his imagination, his hands are moving by themselves as he goes down screaming. It descends behind a ridge of hemlocks, and a fiery macramé comes crackling in a hearth of pitch black smoke that fumes from the wreckage with a booming thunder. Paladino feels the explosion more than he sees it. It shakes everything, threatens to rattle his bones apart as it goes thrumming through him as his heart hitches.

When he dares to open his eyes again, he looks toward the trees and sees something strange.

A sliver of perfect black and white against the fire, there stands a pale man that seems to shimmer against the brightness of death behind him. He's tall, unnaturally so, with long hanging limbs that are terribly thin.

For a split second, there's a whip of hot static that cracks in his skull and almost leaves him silently howling. He's never felt anything like it before, it's double-edged for how it soothes the pain in his leg, but leaves his stomach knotted in a tight embrace around his spine. Something isn't right about this creature, whatever it is. Something is even more royally fucked up about this newcomer than what's grinning down at him now.

Grinning down at him, with an axe back in Shwarts' hands.

"You had your chance, Roger." The Habit smiles. "I'm glad you took it."

The flat of the axe collides with the side of Paladino's skull.

And he knows that when he wakes up, he's going to die.


End file.
